


a hole in the world

by museme87



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Dark fic, F/M, Jon is dead and then he's not, Jon says and does some really problematic stuff later on, Spoilers for TWOW Theon Chapter (but nothing serious), Trigger warning for ADWD Ramsay-Theon-Jeyne plotline, post-adwd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:01:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/museme87/pseuds/museme87
Summary: "Arya Stark" arrives at Castle Black, and Jon's dreams are crushed.





	a hole in the world

**Author's Note:**

> Written for buttercuparry based on the prompt:  
> A dark au where Jon comes back from the dead and all he can think about is Arya. Bonus points if you can show Jon reacting to Jeyne being disguised as Arya.
> 
> I hope it fulfills your Christmas wishes, dear!
> 
> A quick note: scenes that appear in italics are dream sequences, and each of the three parts ends on one. They are chronological with the rest of the story.

**I.**

_Cold_.

The white wolf feels the metal teeth of man at his neck, at his soft belly, at his side. Yet as he turns to lick his wounds, he tastes only snow and fur. Beyond, he hears man sounds. Beyond, there is a smell of blood, heady and familiar. He thinks to go to it, to discover why the scent is so like his own.

 _Run_.

The white wolf pauses only for a moment before slipping away into the night.

 

***

 

The white wolf beds down far from the man noise. He lusts, his mouth thick with saliva, but it is not for deer or elk. He longs for the feel of man flesh between his teeth. Not to fill his empty belly, but to quench a thirst no water can.

He lies. He waits. He sleeps.

 

***

 

_The white wolf weaves through tall, green trees. Snow melts beneath his paws, and below the ground still smells warm. She is not far, his little sister, though she does not smell so little anymore._

_His gray sister stinks of heat so thick he can taste her on his tongue. The little males are in a fury, but she takes their feeble necks between her jaws and threatens to close around them if they do not remember that she leads. She has ruined one bold cousin already._

_The white wolf whines and howls for her, his voice deep with his aching. It has been too long, and she is his._

_Her answer comes from all directions, closing in on him. A song for wolves. She is half-mad for him, and he her. The white wolf circles the patch of forest, frantic and eager._

_He will come for her._

 

 

*****

**II.**

 

“…Lord…,” the red moon whispers, high above him.

The white wolf looks up, watching it take strange shapes. It flickers like flame; its colors turn. The snow beneath his paws runs red, but feels no different.

“…protect…,” the moon sighs. “…light…”

The once-cold winter winds blow warm against his face, and the white wolf snarls at the smell of it. The air is pregnant with the scent of man playing with ancient things. Things from beyond the great ice wall. Things across a giant stream where the ground burns with hot snow. Things deep within the dark place with earth of smoke and ash.

“…flame among…”

The ancient things make the white wolf feel as if he has not drunk water in days, as if he had walked through the campfire flames, as if his fur had burned until only broken, blistered skin remained. He cries out to the red moon as he feels man teeth tear into his belly and back, hot and angry.

“…full of terrors!”

Suddenly, Jon sits up, his mouth gasping for sweet air to fill his burning lungs. His body feels as if it’s weighed down by a hundred stone or more, leaving him to fall back on the hard table beneath him. His vision is clouded, his eyes dry, but he can make out face-like shapes. Those, and a bright, pulsing red light that comes through clearly. 

Though he tries to ask for water, his tongue rests heavy in his mouth. The weak noise he makes comes out strangled. And then there are voices around him, loud and soft, as if he’d been boxed on both ears in a helm. Jon tries to reach out in their direction, but it is far too difficult to move his hand. 

Darkness takes him.

 

***

 

_Jon knows these corridors well. When his father and Lady Stark had been too preoccupied to worry after them, he and Robb would chase each other up and down them until they were breathless and exhausted. They are as familiar to him as the scars on the back of his hands._

_Winterfell._

_The snows fall in the courtyard below, almost deafening in the absence of life. He pauses only briefly to watch. At the Wall, it is not as if snow is a novelty, but there is a magic to it here at Winterfell that he had altogether forgotten._

_Yet he is urged onward with a purpose he doesn’t quite grasp. His legs take him up two stairwells and over a covered bridge. In his heart, he knows where the path will lead him, and Jon does not resist. He picks up his pace as he rounds the corner, finding a door to the left at the end of a short corridor. Once eager, Jon now stops before it, his feet leaden. On the other side, he will find nothing but ghosts. A ghost—one. A little girl who he once thought to be dead._

_Jon’s heart tightens. Of all people,_ he _should have known that she would have survived. If he’d only believed in her and broke his vows sooner, he could have spared her from whatever the Bastard of Bolton had done to her. But he hadn’t. And he’d failed her. Jon doesn’t know how he can ever face her again._

 _Yet face her he does because the door to her room opens, and she appears before him like a dream. She looks older—nearly a woman grown—and_ beautiful. _Her dressing gown is clean and crisp and gray, so unlike anything she’s ever worn before. And Jon thinks, surely, this must be a dream because his little sister had never been so tidy with her appearance. But then he notices the smudge on the side of her nose and messy hair, and suddenly Jon_ believes.

_“What took you so long, stupid?”_

_“I…I don’t know?” he answers with a happy sigh._

_She tugs him into her room by the hand and shuts the door behind them. She looks at him expectantly, her grey eyes as mischievous as they had been as a child. But she is no child, Jon must remind himself. Even if she had not yet flowered, a_ child _cannot survive all that Arya Stark has survived_. _All that_ he _had failed to protect her from._

_As if she can feel his throat tighten, she asks, “What’s wrong?”_

_Jon shakes his head. “I’m sorry.”_

_Her brow pulls, but she smiles. Arya takes three steps, shortening the distance between them, and wraps her arms around his middle. She squeezes as tight as her thin arms can muster and holds him just so. Jon cannot bring himself to return the gesture._

_“I don’t deserve to touch you.”_

_“Hold me, Jon.”_

_“No, I—”_

_“I won’t argue with you.”_

_His touch is tentative, but when he feels her warmth in his arms, it’s as if the Old Gods and the New had absolved him of everything he’d done. He buries his nose in her hair, its smell as sweet as tall, summer grasses. He kisses the top of her head, then her forehead, and repeats again and again and again._

_“I broke my vows to try to save you,” he whispers. “I_ died _, but it wasn’t enough, Arya. I wanted to bring you_ home _…”_

_“I know,” she says, pulling back. “And there is nothing to forgive.”_

_She rises to her tip-toes to kiss his cheek. She pauses, but only for a moment, before showering him with kisses as she always had. Yet, her tiny pecks were not quick and gleeful, but slow and lingering. Across his cheekbone. On the tip of his nose. Near his jaw. And then too-close to the corner of his lips. If he could only allow himself to shift just so, Jon thinks the touch of her might be enough to warm his cold and aching bones._

 

_*****_

**III.**

 

He died.

He died, and they brought him back without considering if he’d be happier that way. Melisandre speaks of a promised warrior, servant to her lord. She tells him that it is his destiny to live on because the Lord of Light willed it so through Jon’s resurrection. Jon doesn’t care about her god, or the Seven Kingdoms, or the dead that walk Beyond the Wall.

Jon only cares for one little girl.

_The woman is important too!_

His heart beats painfully with the memory. It does that often now. When everything else about his life has flattened out and dulled—some memories mere wisps now—the world comes in sharp and blinding when he remembers Arya.

_I hate needlework! It’s not fair!_

Thud-thump.

_A proper southron lady doesn’t just throw her clothes inside her chest like old rags._

Jon brings his hand to the sting in his breast, wincing. _No_ , he thinks, _you are no southron woman. You are of the North, wild and strong and unforgiving. And mine_. The ache in his heart eases. 

 _A present?_

Thud-thump.

 _I can be fast._  

Thud-thump. 

 _I wish you were coming with us._

Thud-thump. 

_Does it have a name? Oh, tell me._

Thud-thump.

 _Needle!_

Thud-thump.

Stick ‘em with the pointy end. 

**Stick ‘em with the pointy end.**

STICK ‘EM WITH THE POINTY END.

Jon picks up a flagon of ale and throws it against the nearest wall. The _clang_ as it hits is not as loud as it should be, but the sound of his heartbeat is deafening in his ears. 

He will show Bolton’s bastard the pointy end of Longclaw, and stick him slow and sweet.

 

 ***

 

The horns sound once for riders, but Jon does not stir in his chambers. At dawn he’d hanged five traitors, and now his watch has ended. Whatever tidings come for the Black Brothers, they are meant for the Brothers alone; he has no brothers now.

But they come for him still—Satin, sweet Satin, who tries so hard for him. Jon attempts to smile for his once-steward because Satin has always been good to him, but Jon finds that his smiles are only spent in dreams now, ones with a brown-haired woman-child who is too perfect to be true.

“My lor—”

A look—Jon checks him.

“Jon, forgive me.” 

“Whatever it is—”

“Your _sister_ , or so claims her escort sent by Stannis Baratheon.”

Dizzy, Jon steadies himself on a nearby chair. He can feel her shower of kisses on his face as if it had only just happened, her weight in his arms.

“Does—does she look like _me_?” he asks, eyes wide and unseeing. “Does she? She’s grown now, surely, but we look alike, like our father. We have the same gray eyes.”

“Jon, I do not know,” Satin answers, a touch of pity in his voice. “I’m sorry. I did not think to follow them as they led her to the hall.” 

“Right, of course,” he says, and there’s a clarity to his words that wasn’t quite there before. “She’ll want to see me.” 

Jon presses past Satin, forgetting his cloak and Longclaw altogether.

 

***

 

Before he even opens the door to the hall, he’s shouting her name so loudly his throat feels raw. Jon throws the door aside like it is feather-light and searches the crowds of people—Brothers, Queen’s men, and Free Folk alike taking in the heat and shelter.

“Arya!”

The people stare at him as they had when they’d first seen him after Melisandre brought him back. There is fear and uncertainty in their eyes, but he hardly feels it. Only one thing matters now, but he cannot find her. 

“Arya!” 

No one moves to say anything, the hall as silent as a crypt. And Jon cannot understand. Why isn’t his sister running to him? Had she been escorted elsewhere in the few moments it took for Satin to fetch him? Jon nearly turns back to Satin to ask him, but a slow, sheepish movement catches his eye and he pauses for a moment. Only, it is no one, only a woman, and Jon feels irritation churn in his belly. 

“Satin, where—”

“Jon?”

The voice is meek and strangely not unfamiliar. He turns back to it, back to the woman who had moved towards him.

“Jon.” 

“Where is my sister? Arya!” he shouts again, surveying the room.

“Lord Commander, this _is_ your sister, Arya Stark,” says one of the Queen’s men, gesturing towards the woman that said his name. 

Jon snatches the Queen’s man—Massey, he thinks—up by his leathers, startling everyone in the hall and especially Massey himself. “Don’t you _ever_ speak her name. It is not _yours_ to say.” 

“Jon, please, I can—” starts the woman, but Jon pulls his arm away from her before her comforting touch alights, frightening her into silence.

“ _That_ is not my sister,” he says to Massey, still stuck in his grip. “Where is my sister?”

“We were told that _she_ is your sister. Mors Umber vouched for her.” 

“Then Mors Umber is a fool!”

“Please, Jon, it’s not his fault—” the woman tries, her voice trembling. “It’s me, Jeyne. Vayon’s daughter. Please, there was a mistake. The Boltons, they—” 

Jon loosens his grip on Massey, turning to Jeyne and silencing her with his hard stare. “Where is Arya, Jeyne?” 

 

***

 

Later, Satin brings Jeyne Poole to Jon’s solar, her small and broken body shaking like a leaf. To his credit, Satin hesitates before leaving them alone together, perhaps placing too much faith in the man Jon used to be and forgetting the man that he’s become. The sound of the door closing terrifies her; _everything_ terrifies her, Jon has come to realize, but he can’t find it within himself to care.

He watches her from his seat next to the fire, watches Jeyne Poole cross her arms over her chest and collapse into herself as much as possible, refusing to meet his gaze. She would flee or disappear or hide in the corner if she could, but she can’t. He won’t allow it. He will only allow her to feel alone and unprotected, because surely that is what his sister felt. It is only right that Jeyne continues to play the role of Arya in this mummer’s farce, the liar.

When he looks at her, all he sees is Not Arya. He doesn’t understand how one of his father’s own men could have looked upon this woman and have seen a Stark of Winterfell. She is _nothing_ like Arya. She has none of Arya’s wild, northern beauty. She lacks the Stark eyes, the piercing gray. And she certainly acts nothing like Arya, not this timid, broken little flower. Jeyne Poole is so unlike Arya that looking upon her face disgusts him.

“I—” 

“Horseface.” 

The word shocks her, and she begins withdrawing into herself again, shamed. And Jon wants her to feel shame. May the Old Gods help him, he wants her to suffocate from it. Together with Sansa, so many years ago, she had hurt Arya, made her feel like such an ugly little thing that Arya had come to him crying. And it was he who had to build back up what Sansa and Jeyne tore down, day after day. Back then, he had no power to protect Arya from a trueborn daughter of his father’s man, but now? Now she has nothing to shield her from him.

“You liked to call her that, remember? Arya Horseface?” Jon says, the word a curse on his lips. 

“W-we were _children_ , Jon, _please_ —” 

“Don’t beg. You’d never stoop so low before, so don’t bother now,” he pauses, and then, “Tell me what Ramsay Bolton did to Arya.”

“He didn’t… _have_ Arya. It was… _me_.”

Jon stares into the fire, the flames licking at fresh logs. “Ramsay Bolton wed Arya Stark. Whatever happened in that castle happened to my little sister. He did it to _her_.”

“He did it to _m_ —”

“Stop!” Jon growls, a low warning like Ghost’s. “Answer my question, and truly.”

He spares a glance at her, watching her anger, her disgust, her fear, her sorrow. But it does not matter to him, not when Arya suffered more in her much shorter life. Jon does not know what became of her in King’s Landing. All he knows is that the pain done to her did not stop when she took her last breath.

 

***

 

_She smiles wide at him, her hair a pool on her pillow beneath her head and her hand stroking the side of his face. When they were children, they would spend hours like this together, side-by-side on their beds or beneath the trees in the Godswood. It is no less sweet now that they are grown._

_Their legs are tangled together, their bodies close. Arya’s light, airy nightgown hides little from him, but Jon doesn’t think to protest. She is here and whole and happy. Why should it matter how she dresses, or how close they are with barely inches between them, or that they are brother and sister? She is_ loved _. No one can ever cherish her the way that he does, so there can be no fault in this, not when she is so content._

_“Do you remember that time when—”_

_“Yes,” Jon smiles wide._

_“You didn’t let me finish,” she protests, her gray eyes dancing._

_“I doesn’t matter,” he says, bringing her hand to his lips and kissing her chewed-down nails. “I remember.”_

_Arya laughs, and his body warms. She rolls closer to him from her laughter. Jon moves his hand to her hip, his thumb sinking into the pliant flesh around her hipbone. They share a breath, and Arya tilts her head up, her lips a ghost over his own._

_“I won’t let them get away with what they did to you,” he says._

_“I know you won’t.”_

_She nuzzles his nose with her own, their lips accidentally meeting. He watches her reaction, the way her eyes close and small breasts heave in loose silk. He guides her chin down so that their lips might meet once more, and when Arya—always bold—finds him, his sigh mingles with her soft moan._

_“I’m going to kill them all for you,” he swears._

_But to his ears, it sounds much more like “I love you.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Holidays, Buttercup and all the Jonrya Fam! 
> 
> A few notes:  
> 1\. Title was taken from a line from Angel the Series in the episode that Fred dies. It feels fitting because the guys scramble to save her, which involves travelling to a place where there's a literal hole in the world to find out nothing can be done to save her. It's here that Spike says, "There's a hole in the world. Feels like we ought to have known." It really jives with the vibe I was going for in this fic where Arya is gone, there's nothing Jon can do to save her, and he should have known all along that she's not coming back. 
> 
> 2\. Jon's whole "this didn't happen to you, it happened to her" is BULLSHIT, and hopefully you all know me well enough by now to know that I would never, ever write that as a legitimate position to have. But I'm doing this from Jon's POV and death turned him dark; it seemed like the appropriate thing to have him pull if he's going dark. He's also suffering from ptsd. 
> 
> 3\. Those damn dream sequences were totally influenced by all my The Exorcist viewing lately, especially season 2, where the demons give you everything you want. So Jon gets whatever he wants in those dream sequences.


End file.
